Bringing Banking into the Digital Age and Simplifying IT

A large European domestic bank is in the process of transforming its fragmented application landscape, manual IT delivery processes, and disparate workforce. This three-year effort will save the bank more than 30% in IT costs while significantly increasing stability and reducing complexity. This ambitious project positions the bank well for its move to new digital business models.

Banking customers expect an experience similar to advanced digital players like Google, Netflix, or Uber. They are looking for easy, direct access via all channels and immediate response from their banks. To deliver this experience, banks must transform their legacy systems and simplify, automate, and change their way of working.

This European bank had reached an inflection point. It was well positioned to meet traditional banking requirements, but it was not ready to meet the requirements of the digital age. It had to find a way to significantly improve the quality, delivery, and costs associated with its IT services.

Working with BCG and using the Simplify IT toolset, the bank was able to:

The bank is decommissioning two-thirds of all technical platforms (including mainframe) and setting overarching standards for a few well-selected connectivity mechanisms, databases, application servers, and operating systems. It also will decommission about 50% of its applications, minimize customization, and close two-thirds of its data centers.

The bank is moving much of its infrastructure to a private cloud with a Platform as a Service (PaaS) and a colocated team of developers and operations experts. This way, application teams can serve themselves, leaving more time for development. This step decreases time to market significantly.

Feature teams combine end-to-end responsibility with agile methodology to cut coordination overhead, waiting time, and unnecessary complexity. A feature team pilot raised efficiency by up to 50% and boosted speed-to-market by about 60%.

The bank is reducing the number of applications it uses by approximately 50%.

Speed-to-market is increased by 60% as a result of workforce improvements.

The bank is in the process of decommissioning 66% of technical platforms.

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